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A beautiful yet harrowing journey into mental illness; Necessary Purchase

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1249751899
Mental Illness is something that we as a society still have yet to fully grasp in not only its fullest symptoms but also in the acceptance and proper care for those afflicted. When we as a society can so barely manage conversing about such a thing, how could we possibly expect a simple indie game to do any better? Well really we can’t, yet here Ninja Theory stands, with the only game that I’ve ever played that has put such an effort into making sure that mental illness is portrayed not only accurately, but respectfully. While I’m no expert on mental illness by any means, the sheer effort that they’ve put in by intimately working with multiple researchers, doctors, and psychologists is astounding. Ninja Theory clearly cares not only about creating an indescribably impressive game, which they’ve done in spades, but they also care about making sure that the mental health issues Senua faces are correctly portrayed. Senua is an incredible character- one of the best designed that I’ve seen throughout all of 2017- not because she’s a badass, which she is, or because she’s resilient, which she also is, but because she’s relatable. You aren’t going to relate to her struggles with mental health, at least I hope not, but you still relate to her because she’s so human. When she charges the bridge to Hel and first encounters the witch Helya, her initial reaction isn’t to raise her blade and charge, but, when faced with the epitome of hell itself, she instead curls up and cries in terror. It’s easy to get lost in the immersive feeling of badassery that comes with games such as this, but I appreciate how realistically they chose to portray her humanity, though you can only be so realistic when your game deals with demons from Hel. She’s a flawed character by design, tormented both by the ones she’s loved and lost, as well as the literal demons attempting to cleave her in twain, and this makes you care exponentially more about both her journey and troubles. Her voice actor does an incredible job of pulling you into her as a character, and this makes both her and the game itself more immersive and also keeps you hooked through the whole journey.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1251101948
Hellblade is an interesting mix between a puzzle game and an action one, which means you’re going to wade through long puzzle areas broken up by segments of furious third-person melee fighting. I didn’t expect for Hellblade to have such incredible melee combat, every strike has an increasingly powerful impact and your enemies show visceral marks where they’ve been wounded. On top of that the system is incredibly simple, which is important because you’re going to be fighting enemies from multiple directions, often at the same time. The system is simple enough to be usable in even the most fast-paced combat circumstances, pretty much only consisting of light and heavy attacks, with the ability to roll and parry being your main methods of defense. I like the simplicity, not only because it keeps you from getting tangled up when combat gets frantic, but also because it means the focus is more on the encounters themselves as opposed to complex fighting mechanics. The fights themselves are always stacked against you, but in a way that somehow manages to stay miles away from artificial difficulty. While yes, most every fight sees you attempting to repel multiple foes simultaneously, it’s never more than two or three, meaning that you aren’t going to get swamped and massacred just because you don’t have four arms and ten eyes to see everything. My only real problem is that there’s a boatload of untapped potential with the combat because there’s really quite few times that you actually end up fighting something, maybe a dozen or so throughout the whole game. I think this is a missed opportunity because it’s so fun to hack your way through these demonic manifestations and bosses, but it’s just so infrequent that it feels as if they failed to fully capitalize on all the potential. Bosses are another interesting idea that I think wasn’t fully capitalized on, though the ones that are present are some of the most enjoyably terrifying fights I’ve ever played. The very first boss is one that’s going to stick with me for quite a while: Valravn, a raven lord built of deceit who whirls about the arena tearing both your mind and body asunder. He had quite few abilities, really only three notable ones: his cross-arena whirl, his mirror image split, and his throwing knives, but the events that happened as the battle progressed are forever ingrained in my memory. He appears randomly as the phases change and torments you with cackles and horrifying wails, as if he were everywhere and nowhere at once. It becomes hard to find your way as Valravn draws all light from the arena, turning it into a murky bog obscured with thick black clouds. This was by no means my favorite fight, that would either go to Helya or Fenrir, though all of them are neck-and-neck in my rankings. The reason this fight stuck with me is that it happens extremely early on in the game, maybe three hours in, and really sets the mysterious yet blood-curdling tone for the rest of Senua’s Journey.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1251096608
Earlier you may have caught that I mentioned how this isn’t really an action-oriented game, for the most part you’re going to be solving cryptic puzzles centered around nordic runes. They’re simple puzzles, at least in how they work, as all you’re doing is finding a magical symbol that bars your path and matching it with things in the environment. This sounds all kinds of absurd so let me give you an example: You find your way barred by a gate enruned with an upside down V the color of Hel’s flames, you now have to find the matching V that’s formed somewhere in the environment, such as some overlapping trees or something. Using norse symbols means that you’re always immersed in the position of Senua looking for the way forward, instead of being in the position of a player just looking for the solution to a puzzle. On top of the puzzles being immersive, the way that they’re designed also forces you to explore the environment, because you can’t very well find out what part of the environment matches if you haven’t even explored more than two steps. Hellblade also has some of the most beautiful graphics I’ve ever seen from a non-AAA release; I found myself exploring each and every zone not because of some reward, the only one of those being extra story tidbits, but instead because I wanted to get as many beautiful screenshots as I could. These extra story tidbits come in the form of lorestones which litter the environment, and I actually found myself actively attempting to not only seek them out, but to seek out literally every one of them. They tell the history of the Norse gods, explaining different stories related to each one and describing multiple gods in extreme detail, laying out their personal relationships as well as their conflicts. So not only do you get an extraordinarily beautiful narrative, main character, and system of combat, but the whole time through you’re learning about Norse history!

A flawless experience, beautiful in it's deranged nature, that perfectly melds together action-adventure and puzzle gameplay to create an unparalleled emotional story.